Normal Novelists have-use-enjoy Multiple Personality: Implications for Fiction Writers, Literary Criticism, Human Nature, and the Creative Process

Probably 90% of novelists and possibly 30% of the general public have a normal version of multiple personality: they have true multiple personality (not just multiple roles or variable moods), but it does not cause them any significant distress or dysfunction, so they are not mentally ill. And for some purposes, such as writing novels, it is a major advantage.

Fiction Writers

If you don’t have a normal version of multiple personality, you are unlikely to become a novelist. Writing a novel without having multiple personality is like trying to recognize a face by measuring each facial feature and then comparing the measurements with those of all existing faces: It is theoretically possible to do that, but the brain has a better way. 

Similarly, it is theoretically possible to mechanically construct characters and stories, but it is not practical, especially since your competitors are people with multiple personality who have a genius for conjuring up alternate personalities (characters) and their imaginary worlds. (Of course, you still need to practice the craft and work very hard. Multiple personality is necessary, but not sufficient.)

Literary Criticism

Many novels have characters with unrecognized multiple personality (see past posts), because neither the characters nor the narrator ever mention multiple personality, per se, and most readers are not alert to the possibility.

When the multiple personality is not essential to either characterization or plot—e.g., Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl—I call it gratuitous multiple personality, which means that the only reason for its presence in the novel is that it probably reflects the novelist’s own psychology.

When the multiple personality is essential to the characterization and plot—e.g., Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde—but the novel never mentions multiple personality, per se, then I call it unacknowledged multiple personality, which also probably reflects the novelist’s own psychology.

No “Unconscious” in Multiple Personality

Some novelists might be quick to say they already know about psychology, and that, yes, they do sometimes get messages and ideas from their “unconscious.” But “the unconscious” is a misnomer, because anything that thinks, has ideas, and sends messages is obviously conscious. What multiple personality demonstrates is that the mind, rather than having a conscious and an unconscious, has, at least in some persons, multiple consciousness.

Alternate personalities are almost always conscious, even when they not “out.” The fact that the host personality is not aware of what an alternate personality is thinking, does not make those thoughts unconscious, any more than my not knowing what your thoughts are, makes your thoughts unconscious.

When personalities are not out, they are either monitoring what is going on with the host personality and the social situation, or they may be busy behind the scenes, which is how some problems get solved while the host personality is otherwise occupied.

Roles and Moods vs. Multiple Personality

A common myth about multiple personality is that it does not really exist, but is just a fancy way to say that people have different roles and moods. Let me explain the difference.

Roles include parent, child, spouse, work, sports, citizenship, religion, race, gender, etc.; by moods I mean, sometimes you are in the mood for this, but other times you are in the mood for that. And it is quite true that a person’s behavior and attitude may be quite different, depending on which of their roles and moods is foremost at the moment.

However, most people, no matter which of their roles or moods is foremost, feel like they are basically the same person. Their subjective experience is of being one person, who adapts to different roles, and who experiences different moods.

In contrast, in multiple personality, there appears to be more than one person or being, which accounts for the old view of multiple personality as “possession.” For example, some novelists (the regular, host personality) have the sense of being the one who writes down the novels, but see their job as often being that of a transcriber and/or interpreter and/or editor of what is provided to them by the “voice” and/or “muse” and/or characters. These are alternate personalities, the essence of which is to have a sense of being and a mind of its own.

Of course, novelists know that all these entities with minds of their own are, objectively, a product of their own mind and imagination. The novelist is not crazy. But their alternate personalities and the stories they tell feel real—some novelists say “more real than real”—subjectively speaking.

And how could a would-be novelist, who does not have this, compete?